Having read the fungus threads on wooden flutes, I’m starting to think I’m not cleaning my flutes as I could.
Are there any proper cleaning rods which are long enough, with an eyelet to take a cleaning cloth for a flute of 800mm length?
The only ‘usable’ one I have, is a bass recorder mop, but it doesn’t even span more than 30cm.
The 800mm one piece rim blown flute, is permanently capped at the mouth end.
Thanks.
Shotgun cleaning rod? I mean if there isn’t something else more suitable.
800mm, that is pretty long. After the last thread on this topic, I went out and salvaged the stainless steel strip that is embedded in the old windshield wipers on my car. This one is 21" long that is only about 500mm. The longest wipers I have seen are in the 27" range.
This one is about 1/8" wide and very stiff. I fashioned a small loop in one end that will hold the tip of a cloth and put a bit of tape around the metal to make sure steel never meets cocus wood. Cloth plus rod fits fine through the small end of an Olwell Nicholson.
Lewis
Thanks for the link Steve. They look perfect! Only … they cost as much as some of the flutes I play with!
Gotta love those goofy springer spaniels too 
Thanks for the suggestions - I like the idea of a shotgun pipe - however I already get in trouble with airlines for carrying long flutes - especially the single piece bass flutes, which the security classify as a weapon - just like a snooker cue.
The home made solution sounds like a plan. I need to try this out. I’d like the Roger45 one, but at $45 for a rod cleaner…it’s a bit steep at the moment, although it looks like a first rate product for those who can afford it!
I use 14 gauge soft steel wire to make swabs for my pvc flutes. You can fashion the little eye at the end with a pair of needle nose pliers. A swab 600 mm long is no problem. I buy 100 ft. of 14 gauge wire in a small coil for about $7. If you are worried about metal touching the bore of wooden flutes, it’s easy to cover the length of the wire with masking tape. If you want to travel with the long swabs, they bend easily and then can be straightened out when you need them.
Doug’s swabs are great. I use one (uncovered metal) to swab out my blackwood and delrin flutes, even when they’re fully assembled. Just be very gentle, and you’re not going to hurt anything. I keep one hanging from my bedroom closet doorknob.
For disassembled flutes, I use the short plastic ones they sell for recorders.
Play daily, and swab. Didn’t your mother teach you that?
I make these from appropriate lengths of metal, plastic or fibreglass rod - car radio aerials, knitting needles, broken fishing rods, bits of tent pole, flexible plastic rods of unknown function found in skips - with a ball of padding on the tip. I get a blob of quilt batting, wrap it over the tip in silk, and lash it round the rod with thread, bonding it in place with superglue. They take about ten minutes to make. I have some (for tapered instruments) with padded balls of different sizes on each end.
I tried attaching one of these to another rod:
and taped them together.
It broke off in the middle.
The problem is I have one particularly difficult flute which narrows like a shakuhachi, and everything gets jammed down its narrow exit bore (possibly around <8mm)
Try a silk pull-through. Length of cord with a couple of inches of curtain weight cord sewn to one end and a silk rag sewn to the other. Drop the weight through and pull the rag after it. I use those on clarinets (which have the octave tube projecting into the bore, so a more solid object won’t go through).
Those recorder cleaning brushes will coat the bore with fluff. Throw them away. Silk is great because it has very long fibres that don’t come off.